Walker Dance returns to The Place following the sell-out success of its Dance Umbrella debut last year, adding a brand new trio to the popular programme.

Set to a magical score for piano and double bass, Fin Walker's solo Moment to Moment visits a world free of inhibition and full of self-expression. Exhilarating and driving, The 3 of Us tests the physical endurance of the five dancers. Fin Walker's latest work, The Self features Royal Ballet dancer Jenny Tatterstall, Lee Clayden and Gildas Diquero, and was made as part of The Artists Development Initiative at the Royal Opera House.

In 1999 Fin Walker was the winner of a Jerwood Choreography Award which supported the initial creation of The 3 of Us.

Tue 29 Oct - Meet the Artist

Free to ticket holders after the performance.

"the ferocious assault course laid down by Fin Walker's white-hot choreography weaves its way through landmines of human emotion in extremis" Dance Now

Fin Walker, one of the UK’s most intelligent independent choreographers, knows that bodies in motion can communicate strong, wordless stories about being alive. Her solo Moment to Moment, seen in last year’s Umbrella, is a punitive drama of self-exposure. Walker, determinedly tough on herself, struggles through some furious routines: stationary jumps, travelling hops, swinging arms, hands repeatedly slapping the torso. Balanced on one leg, she raises a palm as if propping up the world. Her survivor’s fortitude is compelling, and the sound of her breath as much of an accompaniment as Ben Park’s jazzy, reflective piano and bass score, played live.

There’s heavier breathing in The 3 of Us, a brace of vital, tightly-wound trios also seen last year. Lee Clayden is, initially, the lone male alongside Walker and Lindsey Butcher, wearing see-through tops above slit-thighed black satin skirts. This threesome, all lashing legs, hip bumps, jabbing elbows and jerks, is steeped in sweaty sexual tension. The women exit and events take a homoerotic turn. Clayden, stoically sensual, is joined by pugilistic Scott Smith, likewise clad in red, and Gildas Diquero, wearing white. The men wrestle and stagger, imprisoned within a brute dynamic that quickens the pulse. Smith, sporting a disturbing bully’s smile, plays it like a sadistic game, yet shows a telling submissiveness. Park’s music for bass and percussion is fronted, thrillingly, by the tender, howling falsetto of Nicholas Clapton, singing in Latin.

New to Umbrella 2002 is The Self, a piece composed of two duets. Jenny Tattersall, former Royal Ballet member, dances in both. In the spring Walker presented a tantalising glimpse of it - just a few minutes’ worth, all that she’d created - at the Royal Opera House’s Clore Studio, as part of the Artists’ Development Initiative there. Walker has no simple explanation for what drives this work. “As always, it’s up to individual interpretation. For me, words and phrases that spring to mind to describe it are powerful, energetic, all-pervading, tender, moments of respite, dynamic shifts, fast, surprising, unpredictable, yin and yang. It could be preceived as two sides of the same person, a relationship with the self, or as a relationship between friends, siblings, lovers… Whatever the viewer reads into it!”

Ask what’s making her tick these days, and the answers gush out: “My continual questions about life, why we’re here, my purpose in the world and spiritual growth, the frequency of movement and how people can connect with themselves through experiencing the work.” She’s not done. “How to be in the now, our relationships as outer reflections of our inner worlds. Acceptance. Non-attachment. Forgiveness.” She’s also hoping to present her biggest piece yet in 2003, a work for seven dancers and seven musicians. Diquero and Clayden agree that dancing for Walker is a magical experience. “Fin is just pure energy,” says the former. “She gives us very simple tools - push and pull, skid, fight - that are like ingredients for emotions, feelings, a story. It’s okay to have a concept or want to tell a story, as long as you keep a dance for what it is. What you get with Fin is real. It’s purely physical. You can’t fake it.”

According to Clayden, it’s Walker’s discerning eye that enables her to structure extensives improvisations into a finished piece. Again, she gives the dancers words to release feelings and the corporal reactions that arise from them. For Clayden, key words built round The Self include imprint, restrict, flight, ground, impact. “Fin uses what we’re going through onstage,” he says, “in our breathing and interacting. It’s very natural. The audience gets drawn in by that. They can identify.” There’s also a personal satisfaction. “As long as I’ve stayed in the moment of the piece and what the words are, I can come offstage and not worry about how the performance has gone.”

_________________This interview was posted by Stuart Sweeney on behalf of Donald Hutera and first appeared in Dance Umbrella News.

Donald Hutera writes regularly on dance and arts for The Times, Evening Standard, Time Out, Dance Europe, Dance Magazine (US) and Dance Now. He is co-author, with Allen Robertson, of The Dance Handbook.

With Jenny Tattersall, Lee Clayden and Gildas Diquero working with Fin Walker this promises to be dance of high quality. I met one of the team on Saturday who was very excited about the tour. There was a run-through last week which went well by all accounts.

I'm delighted to announce that CriticalDance will be sponsoring the tour.

DESPITE their watertight construction, Fin Walker’s fiercely physical dances are open to interpretation. Not that this rising young British independent choreographer is abdicating creative responsibility. Rather than impose her artistic intentions on us, Walker invites us into her dances and says: Feel free to take and bring what you want.

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